


my heart is an apple

by indications



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Asphyxiation, Black Romance, F/M, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-03
Updated: 2012-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-28 20:19:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/311794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indications/pseuds/indications
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>You're not sure if there's a right or wrong<br/>But it feels like there is when I treat you like this</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my heart is an apple

**Author's Note:**

> Written more than two months ago; seeking a beta.

Rose uses the word matesprit, and it’s all too appropriate, if only for the way she drags Kanaya by the wrist to the easily-scrubbed safety of her white-tiled bathroom, because the last time they made love in the bedroom they had to throw the sheets out. For the bite marks on her neck, for the _noises_ Kanaya makes, for the unflinchingly lush novels she writes and _reads to Kanaya aloud_ , she uses the word matesprit.

The rest of her human ex-players still-teammates kinky-polymoirail _friends_ have long since grasped the concept of troll romance. She is the only one to practice it. John has his troll boyfriend, and Dave has his troll girlfriend, and both of them have their ears gnawed entirely too frequently for traditional human tastes but that is as far, really, as it goes. They love their troll partners, yes, with all the ferocity a human ever musters, but as far as she knows, as far as she Sees, it never reaches the piteous aching tumult of a real redrom.

John and Jade do moirallegiance like it is second nature, and perhaps somehow it is: Vriska Serket asleep in John’s lap before a blue-flickering screen; Jade draping flower chains over Tavros Nitram’s too-wide horns. Dave and Karkat play at blackrom, like children kicking sand and pulling hair, but in the end Dave is too human, and Karkat knows him too well. Jade is their record-breaker in peacekeeping marathons, but even she is exhausted and irritable by the end of an auspiticizing stint and lets would-be rivals come to blood out of sheer frustration. No, they are human, and they are forgiven for it, because it is their world to rule, now.

Rose is different. She has always been Different by turns, and this new change she accepts with the sore neck and easy kisses and Kanaya’s cardigans over her shoulders on chill mornings. Matesprit. Yes. Perhaps they were fated indeed.

And this would be enough for her, this _should be enough for her_ , and yet come adulthood, as she knows it; come death and rebirth; come the pedestrian Real World and her place in it; fulfillment, finality, as she would have built it for herself: she is not satisfied.

And here she is, kneeling under the hot spray of the shower, fingers slick and Kanaya, her lover, her matesprit, gasping, _can’t, I can’t, I can’t_. Here she is, with her hair plastered to her face and her mascara running, on her knees in her bathroom, wanting _more_.

It scares her.

It hadn’t worried her before, this subtle urge, a quiet kind of queer or kinky she didn’t care to examine beyond a thirteen-year-old’s diagnosis:  _pansexual, boundary issues,_ and a Freudian mother-obsession to boot.

As though it were so simple.

 

If it were simple, Rose would be the girl the world and all, _all_ its players see, clever and brash and ultimately _too good_ _for_ the ex-Prince who was never really interested in Hope.

Eridan is brittle and bitter and arrogant with a sense of entitlement vaster than any earthly sea. He is royal and haughty and desperate, _desperate_ for attention, seeking worship like a starving man after a crust of bread. He is a child crying for a toy. He is wanton and shameless, like no creature Rose has ever encountered. She sees him huff like an offended aristocrat, like a fish out of water, a small boy wearing pilfered treasure like dress-up clothes and she _wants_ him.

He comes to her like a shark to fresh blood, circling hungry and needy, needy, needy. His advances are like watching a goldfish swim headfirst into the walls of its glass tank, again and again, and again and still again, and she waits for the pity to come and all she finds is contempt.

There is simply nothing _to_ him, nothing but a self-conscious self-obsessed lack of empathy. Kanaya tells her of his ancestor, whose title Eridan wore when he was yet younger, and Rose can only sigh in disappointment.

Eridan is a tool.

Eridan is a blunt instrument she works out her kinks with, a self-wielded penknife into her troubled and troubling sexual malaise. Eridan flushes orchid when she sneers at him in public, black as black as black can be, but human, blonde hair smooth over hornless head, teeth blunt and never raised to love in quadrants. Flirting with him is a vocal exercise, a yoga position, an organic remedy for the ache in her temples when Kanaya is contented and Rose simply _isn’t_.

They are old enough and settled enough that it nearly shocks them, her ex-comrades still-comrades twelve-and-four tied in knots. It is a blatant caliginous come-on and she is _not their kind_ : the human words for it are _bitch_ or _grudge_ or _starting shit_ and none of them are remotely close. For Rose, it starts at _curiosity_ and _perversity_ and _ennui_ and _malcontent_ , malcontent with herself for her malcontent and a hearty helping of _repression_ on the side.

Eridan is a construct of fishbones and webbing, self-pity and belligerent loneliness. He is neglected in all the ways she is cared for, and he is never for a second unaware of it.

It is never truly mutual, even from the very first, when all she sees in him is pride and distain and weakness. Rose Lalonde is a cultural anthropologist extraordinaire, but she will never ache to be _loathed_.

Still there must be _something_ she’s missing, or she wouldn’t smirk when he snipes at her, wouldn’t entertain fantasies of pulling his hair and biting his throat. She is textbook caliginous, spades upon spades for him, and it makes no sense, and she finds she doesn’t care for it to.

 

The first time she admits it, pursues it, is subtle as a sledgehammer to all her much-imagined victories, Eridan eyeing her up-down condescending and unimpressed, _you got no idea wwhat youre gettin into lalonde_ , shark teeth bared in challenge, _youre in too deep already_.

Rose Lalonde knows she is in too deep when he slams her into the wall, clawed fingers twisting into the front of her blouse, his face up close to hers, hissing and furious and easily, easily twice her strength. It is not Eridan she has underestimated but this ritual of a good blackrom, just a touch too violent to suit an elegant palette.

She is pleased, oh, infinitely pleased and nearly as mortified when they come to a draw, adrenaline long since having set her limbs to a low tremble, skin terrifyingly cold under the sticky heat of too much blood, too much of it hers.

She is loathe even to think it, but she was not prepared for this. Eridan does not turn his back on her when he goes, and there is not a touch of eagerness or _hope_ in his eyes, only rage, offset with a cold and alien _calculation_.

He is a child. He is a self-absorbed, unsubtle, lonely whining obnoxious _brat_. He would come on to a potted plant if he thought it would reciprocate.

It simply cannot be.

Weak-willed, whining, insufferable Eridan Ampora is a _pleasure_ to do battle with.

He is a tiny Orphaner Dualscar, and Rose Lalonde is the only one who sees it.

 

For a while they tussle in secret, re-sizing each other up, and it is mortifyingly childish, half a step from _I know you are but what am I_ s and sissy slaps and name-calling. She would prefer at least to keep from fisticuffs in public, as though they have only yesterday stumbled dazed into the real and mundane world. No, Sburb and its troll equivalent were a long time ago, and even at thirteen Rose thought herself more sophisticated than this: coming home to Kanaya missing her jacket, boots scrubbed clean, because she cannot bear to open the door stained violet and red.

Only once does he boast of her, overjoyed as he is to have a _real proper rivval,_ a match for him at last, and for that she is friendly and distant for weeks. She would break his flat little nose if she didn’t know how he’d enjoy it.

He kisses her first, a defeat in its own right, and she catches him by the hair before his teeth take her lip – but only just – and she is alight and crackling with that same black spark that’s lived under her skin since before she knew _grim_ and _dark_ could stand side-by-side to name her.

After that she is lost, they are lost together, some kind of off-the-deep-end too-far that has nothing fine-tuned to it, no razor parlays but aggression without passivity and blunt force and his teeth and her fingers. He licks the blood from every wound he inflicts, and she digs her thumbs into the base of his horns. He whines through his teeth and she inhales in gasps and when she comes it isn’t pretty, isn’t Kanaya kissing her and stroking her and worshipping her with her tongue, easing her through it. It is brutal. He is brutal. After, there’s no afterglow, and Eridan still looks like he’d choke her to death in her sleep if she forgot to lock her doors at night, and she is slick and shaking and hates him, _hates_ him for doing this to her, for allowing this, for sinking this low, for dragging her down.

“You will not speak of this,” she says, because her wit has left her, because he will not, “and perhaps I shall deign to make you a habit.”

“Ha _ha_. You’re glubbin hilarious,” he bites back. “You’ll drag yourself back here like a seal through the desert an we both know it. I’m the only ocean for miles, Lalonde, so you can take your empty coddamn threats an shove em in your sarcastic blowhole.”

She could retort, but she does not.

She will find that she has no need.

The bickering quickly turns to little more than agitated foreplay. They barely acknowledge each other in public.

It kills him to keep quiet, but she is as much ocean to him as he is to her. Rose is quick to learn every weak point he has, and he is quick to become fond of defeat.

 

She knows the attention flatters him, as though putting effort into really _hurting_ him is the most romantic gesture ever performed in the bedroom. She catches him being careful with her, and though it has long been agreed that humans are exactly as peach-delicate as their soft flesh implies it is still frustrating to know he holds back. They bruise the same shade of purple, though hers yellow and his only darken as they fade.

 

What bothers her most is not his simpering, not his blustering, not his misplaced chauvinism when he’s biting her shallow instead of doing his worst. It is not the sheer _effort_ he puts into sparring with her, when all he ever offers are overthought oft-misphrased jabs; it is not the way he so excessively loathes her when the worst she’s ever done was knee him in the groin when he tried to call her a slut.

What bothers her is that she stoops to his level.

Not even the once, oh no – that could be excusable (albeit only barely) as impassioned rage or a paroxysm of lust. Rose comes back – like a seal to ocean, and he doesn’t let her forget it. And she cannot quite figure out _why_.

It should be easier to know why Rose craves carnality when she has a perfectly attentive lover. What does she get from him that she cannot find elsewhere?

 

It comes to her amidst what is now a nearly typical tryst: Eridan pinned underneath her, writhing gracelessly, a fish on land, a boy without scruples, wheezing mediocre insults as she palms him through his trousers.

“Fuck you,” she interrupts him, and he spits at her, and she laughs: “Fuck you, Eridan Ampora, you’re _nothing_ , you’re _pathetic_ -” and it occurs to her that she hasn’t been so callow since she was learning to walk, hasn’t strung together a more lackluster sentence since she was a toddler burbling into her applesauce.

Rose gets all the intellectual gratification, all the emotional fulfillment she could possibly want from the troll she calls _matesprit_. She could give – she _has given_ herself migranes trying to best Kanaya’s wit; and when, with Kanaya, has she ever wanted of sex? Nor, even, has she some unexplored fetish, some desire to inflict pain or to _win_ or to talk dirty or to make her lover bleed.

It is simply this: Eridan loves in her all that she loathes in herself.

It should be insulting. Rose Lalonde is shrewd and incisive and formidable always.

Except when she is fucking Eridan.

Anywhere else she would be mortified, but here, she is by her own standard senseless, vapid, artless, uncalculating. She is allowed her own equivalent of picking her nose and belching loudly. And Eridan thinks it’s _sexy_.

She is lazy, she is unguarded, she is the basest version of herself and he _loves_ it.

And what’s more- she trusts him with it?

More than she trusts even Kanaya?

Oh, but that is troubling.

And when she comes to this particular realization, all at once, she sits up and away from him, and he blinks owlishly, surprised, even hurt. As quick as she believes herself, as all-Seeing, it occurs to her organically, spontaneously. Now, of all times. Now, with her hands on his throat and on his crotch, her shirt torn open, her skirt riding up over her knees. Now, and it rocks her back on her heels, and Eridan watches her go from hot to cool in utter bewilderment.

But he recovers quickly, and then she is seeing white stars. She is still in this moment, oh yes, still flesh underneath him, spinning head a house for her rhetoric and her lust.

His hands are on her throat, and his grimace is tight and toothy. Her hands find his wrists.

“Real cute to think you can underestimate me like that,” he growls, and squeezes, and she _laughs_.

The fact that she can still laugh really says it all.

“My god, but you’re _infatuated_ with me, aren’t you?” she wheezes, as patronizing as one can be in such a position. “You won’t even choke me.”

The fins on his neck flare out like an offended lizard’s. It is terribly humorous. Rose stops getting air.

“An that little jibe’s gonna _cost_ you,” he hisses. “I’m gonna slit you a nice pair a gills, land-dweller.”

She is getting faint.

She works her weakening hands around the one finger she can pry from her throat.

And she wrenches it back as hard as she can.

It breaks like a thick green twig. He _shrieks_.

She heaves air in.

Scrabbling back from her on the tile floor, Eridan is as white in the face as trolls ever get, and she is cherry-red and gasping. She does not believe for a moment that pain will dissuade him. Rose would like to recover her breath some, but she knows better than that: she will take her advantage now or she will cede it.

He goes down under her like the breaking of a wave, with a crash and a hiss and a building-back-up-again, one hand – the injured – ginger, the other grasping. She cups his face in her hands, matching his gills to the love-line in her palm. (He will never know. She allows herself this small amusement.)

Even pain-leery he does not flinch.

“You are a wonderful distraction,” she purrs (rasps), “but do not ever delude yourself into believing you are a match for me.”

He does not back down. She does not wish him to.

“We been matched a long time, you an I,” he says, yellow eyes fixed on hers, unblinking. “Even your seamstress gillfriend knows it. Stop actin all high an mighty an get with the program. We were fated since before we even met.”

Fate: yes, it comes back to it again. In pillow-talk murmurs, as Kanaya falls asleep, the glow beneath her skin throwing soft shadows over everything: _fated_ , we were _fated_. In overwrought rants, about romantic comedies and celestial alignment: Karkat, their expert, _it’s fucking fate, can you not see that?_ In shy stutters, blushing rust and cinnamon, his fingers linked with Jade’s, Tavros: _it’s almost – like fate_.

It’s an awfully romantic concept for trolls, perhaps even moreso than a human’s notion of _soulmates_.

_Since before we even met_ , Eridan says. The _we_ round and wavy in his quavering accent, jaw bruised from where she knocked him into a counter last week. His finger, probably broken, already swelling around the knuckle joint.

She wonders if the human equivalent would be buying him flowers. The thought makes her slightly queasy.

He doesn’t even try to break her grip when she leans down to kiss him.


End file.
